


life (can do terrible things)

by sunsetveins



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Blurryface, But different, M/M, Marriage, Mental Health Issues, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, This is really sad, Tyler and Josh adopt, based on terrible things by mayday parade kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 01:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8646832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetveins/pseuds/sunsetveins
Summary: It’s when Tyler attempts suicide for the first time that Josh almost wishes he had listened to his father.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is heavily inspired by the song terrible things by mayday parade

It’s when Tyler attempts suicide for the first time that Josh almost wishes he had listened to his father.

He’d told him. He had told him that life did terrible, awful things and he had warned him of the dangers of falling in love. He hadn’t listened, because Tyler was beautiful and he didn’t understand how anything involving Tyler could end terribly.

His mother had been ill. She was terminal. Josh believed with all his heart that the world would never be so cruel to Tyler. He was too good, had too much in him to offer. There wasn’t a chance. If Josh believed anything, he believed that. He believed that Tyler Joseph was meant to change lives.

Josh remembers how adamant his father had been that he listen, that he take in what he was telling him. He remembers it as he stares at Tyler’s motionless form laying in a hospital bed. He remembers and he promises himself that he’ll make Tyler better, because while the world may not be so cruel as to take Tyler from him, it didn’t seem that the boy he loved shared the same sentiment.

He won’t lose Tyler. He can’t.

 

-

 

The thing that’s killing his boyfriend is called Blurryface, and Josh hates that it has a name but not a face.

He wants to kill it, but Blurryface lives inside of Tyler. This thing has taken up residence within Tyler’s mind and it seems to feed him awful, terrible thoughts. Nothing hurts Josh more than not being able to take Tyler’s pain away.

He can see it now. There’s something off about Tyler when Blurryface is messing around in his head. It’s barely there, but Josh hasn’t taken his eyes off Tyler since the incident. His hands shake and something glints in his eyes, something wrong that causes the hair on the back of Josh’s neck to stand. 

It doesn’t last long. Tyler will pause and then a moment later, it’s as if he’s been drained. He still smiles the same, still laughs the way he always does when he just can’t help it, but there’s still something missing in his eyes and it tears Josh apart. He can’t stand the thought that this was happening before and he never knew. He can’t stand the idea that there isn’t anything he can do about it.

Tyler tells him not to worry. He tells him that he loves him and that he won’t ever leave him. He tells him that now that he’s told Josh, Blurryface can’t drive him that far again.

Josh accepts it, but his father’s words still ring in his head.

_“Now, son, I’m only telling you this because life can do terrible things.”_

 

-

 

Tyler doesn’t try again for four months and Josh forgets about what his father told him. Tyler is stronger than Blurryface.

 

-

 

He asks Tyler to marry him in April and he says yes. Josh doesn’t think that he’s ever been happier in his entire life. Not even when he met Tyler at age sixteen and instantly fell in love with him. Not even when Tyler moved in with him. The moment Tyler Joseph says yes to marrying him is the best moment of Josh Dun’s life.

 

-

 

They get married on Halloween. If the holiday wasn’t his favorite before, it is then. 

The best moment of Josh Dun’s life changes to the moment when he and Tyler kiss for the first time as husbands. During the wedding itself, he was sure it would forever be the exact moment he saw Tyler at the other end of the aisle. Right before they kissed, it was when Tyler could barely say his vows because he was crying too hard and smiling too much. 

As they walk down the aisle hand in hand, Josh catches his father’s gaze. His stomach turns weirdly at the expression on his face, but it’s drowned out when Tyler squeezes his hand.

 

-

 

They adopt a daughter. She’s the most beautiful thing either of them have ever seen. Her name is Ellie.

Her first word is love and Josh’s heart almost explodes when she says it. She’s gazing at them with wide eyes, head tilted to the side. Her tiny hands are resting on top of their linked grasps. She looks at them like they’re her entire world, and she says it.

Josh is so focused on how much he loves this tiny human being that he misses the way Tyler’s demeanor changes. When he sees Tyler smile at them, he doesn’t notice the difference in his eyes.

He’s too caught up in how much he loves them.

 

-

 

Josh drops Ellie off at his father’s house on Sunday’s so they can spend the day together. Despite having no blood relation to himself or Josh, he tells him that Ellie reminds him of Josh’s mother. It makes his father happy, so Josh is happy to let him have time with her.

When he gets home from dropping her off one day, he finds a note on the refrigerator. 

_“You were the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”_

He drops it and takes off running for the bedroom, because he remembers his father telling him that’s what his mother had said when she told him she was dying.

Tyler looks like he’s asleep on the bed when he gets there, but it only takes a second for Josh to spot the empty pill bottle. His stomach drops.

He calls 911, but Tyler is gone. 

 

-

 

The worst moment of Josh Dun’s life changes 5 times.

The moment he spotted the pill bottle beside of Tyler is the first, and then it changes to the moment he’s pronounced dead.

When he tells Ellie, he doesn’t think it could possibly be any other moment in time. 

Tyler is buried and Ellie is screaming. She can’t sleep through the night without her grandfather being there. The moment he doesn’t know how to help his daughter is the fourth time it changes.

The fifth time it changes, the final worst moment of his entire life, is when Ellie tells him she’s met someone and he realizes what his father must have realized when he told him about Tyler.

He can’t bear to see the same happen to her.


End file.
